This one little village BROKE the Russian army

Today, we will take a look at the ongoing battle for Mala Tokmachka.

Here, Ukrainians completely broke Russian forces who have now spent a historically long time trying to capture a tiny village. The Ukrainian defense dealt the Russians a continuous humiliating failure, as their inability to even set foot in it properly has created a total disaster.

Russia has spent more than one thousand five hundred days assaulting Mala Tokmachka, a small village with a pre-war population of three thousand people. The settlement remains strategically important because Moscow hopes to use it as a staging ground for future assaults on Orikhiv, which is the main Ukrainian stronghold in the area. The town is also serving as a critical logistical hub that supplies the southern front, and by capturing it, Russia would be able to attack the Ukrainian defense line directly and push further north. So far, Russian forces have only managed to seize a few houses on the eastern edge of Mala Tokmachka after four years of fighting, while creating a roughly one-and-a-half-kilometer-deep grey zone where fighting continues.

If we take a look at the topographic map, we can see that Mala Tokmachka lies in the lowlands, while Russian forces control the high ground, which gives them fire control to direct constant mortar and artillery fire onto it. The years of relentless bombardment have reduced all concrete defensive positions to rubble, while trenches and basements that once provided cover are also destroyed.

After the Russians believed that the village was undefendable because of the constant strikes, they attempted to push into it using mechanized assault columns, hoping that overwhelming armor would quickly collapse the defenses. However, the only viable road into Mala Tokmachka severely restricts Russian options, forcing them to attack along it repeatedly and turning it into a kill zone. Any movement across the open fields around the settlement leaves vehicles immediately exposed to Ukrainian fire and minefields, making them easy targets and exacerbating their losses. Logistics have become another major obstacle for Russian operations because Ukrainian drone strikes disrupt Russian movements within a radius of up to ninety kilometers behind the front.

Under these conditions and the repeated mechanized assault failures, the Russians were forced into increasingly desperate tactics, switching to small-scale infantry infiltrations, hoping to establish a foothold inside the village. However, even this was a tactical failure because the forest lines that once provided concealment have been devastated to the point where only tree stumps remain, offering no cover from Ukrainian reconnaissance drones. Any movement is quickly detected from the air, and even when one or two Russian soldiers manage to infiltrate the village, holding positions is impossible, and they are quickly destroyed.

Yet, Russian commanders tried to capture one of the key positions in the area with the same ineffective tactic. The local penal colony complex in the southern part of the settlement consists of fortified buildings and has changed hands multiple times throughout the battle, proving the attritional nature of a siege without territorial gains.

Russian forces attempted to destroy it with repeated airstrikes to weaken Ukrainian defenses. However, by reducing the structures to rubble, the Russians also made the position far harder to defend when under their control. Yet, during the periods under Ukrainian control, its defenders can reinforce the complex through the village more easily, while Russian troops were again forced to cross exposed open fields to reach it.  As a result, these repetitive assaults have been producing mounting casualties for more than four years now.

Given that no Russian tactic works, the battle for the tiny Mala Tokmachka has turned into the longest battle in history, even exceeding the Siege of the major town of Leningrad in the Second World War, which lasted eight hundred and seventy-two days and was an important turning point and a win for the Soviets.

Overall, the battle for Mala Tokmachka has become the longest battle in modern military history, exposing the inability of the Russian army to overcome even a tiny settlement when met by well-organized Ukrainian defenders. Despite years of assaults, overwhelming firepower, and control of the surrounding high ground, Russian forces still cannot find the right tactic to achieve success. Ukrainian defenses continue to hold, while Russia suffers mounting losses, as their offensive capabilities degrade every day, forcing Russian commanders to again fabricate fake reports of success.